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Apple patent reveals advanced call waiting system

A new Apple patent published today reveals a new way for a phone to handle incoming calls. Titled “Dynamic context-based auto-response generation,” the patent is a step forward from the call waiting features of iOS6, offering the possibility of answering calls with a pre-recorded message based on caller ID or other attributes.

Another scenario also allows users to manually select an option to answer the call, send it to voice mail, or place it on hold, and the user can enter an estimated hold time for the call, which can be announced to the caller. The patent also describes a method for converting voice mail messages to text. [via Apple Insider]

Comments

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Again I bang my head on my desk in amazement that you can patent something that was blindingly obvious the minute a smart phone existed because the *ideas* here go back decades.

This isn’t an idea to patented, this is simply a feature that would be implemented at some point in the cellular market regardless of whether Apple even existed. The impediment to this coming to market is not new technology or actual inventions, it’s a matter of hardware vendors banging together the right agreements with the carriers and then writing some otherwise simplistic code to handle it. In essence, it’s in the same spirit as customized rings for who is calling - bet Apple wishes they’d had the foresight to patent that as well.

This patent has the polar opposite effect of what the patent is supposed to do: foster innovation and competition by protecting ORIGINAL INVENTIONS. This is an obvious idea, aka not original, and it’s an idea, aka not an invention, so the only purpose of this patent is to try and stop other hardware makers from implementing the feature by lawyer fiat, aka stifling innovation and competition.